A naked Miley Cyrus in "Wrecking Ball" video makes history

Kat Robinson is a regular contributor for SheKnows and loves to connect women to all the latest entertainment news. She currently lives in Scottsdale, Ariz. and is a 2010 Jack Kent Cooke Scholar. Follow her on Twitter @katrobinson1 and f...

55 million views in 48 hours — and climbing

Miley Cyrus broke — or more appropriately wrecked — records Wednesday when the video for her new single, "Wrecking Ball," racked up millions of views within just 24 hours. Cyrus easily passed Vevo's top performer, The Wanted's "Next Best Thing" (12.3 million views), as "Wrecking Ball" nabbed 19.3 million views.

And that was just the beginning.

Currently, the Vevo music video for Cyrus' second single off her album Bangerz, set for release on Oct. 8, has well more than 55 million views. The video for "Wrecking Ball" was released Sept. 9, which equates to about 26 million views a day.

The music video quickly garnered a fair amount of controversy over discussion of its highly sexualized theme, likely influenced by the infamous photographer Terry Richardson. The music video for "Wrecking Ball" includes many frames of Cyrus writhing over concrete, footage of a naked Cyrus sexually straddling a wrecking ball and a make-out session with a mallet.

Vevo is jointly owned by three music giants — Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Abu Dhabi Media — as well as Google. Launched in 2009, Vevo's only offer is streaming music videos, mostly from major record labels.

Cyrus' music video for "Wrecking Ball" is well on its way to becoming one of the most popular Vevo videos of all time, even in just a few days of its release. Known as "Vevo Certified," this honor is reserved for music videos that have more than 100,000 million views. In two days, Cyrus is more than halfway to that milestone.

She promised her fans on Wednesday via Twitter that once her "Wrecking Ball" video hits 150 million views, she will release the full-length director's cut of the music video.

Given Terry Richardson's salacious reputation and the already sexual nature of the current Vevo version, it's safe to assume the director's cut will be an even bigger shock to fans still adjusting to Cyrus' new hypersexualized image.